Chapter 23
DREW
The sound pulled me out of a deep sleep. I lay still for a moment, trying to place it. Not the ocean. Not rain.
The shower.
It took a few seconds for it to register. Kensey was in my shower. It made me smile. Like soul deep. I didn’t do sleepovers. Having a woman in my shower was a new one. And it wasn’t just any woman—it was Kensey. And I decided that was exactly right. She belonged in my shower.
I rolled onto my back and laughed at myself a little. My best friend. The person who stole my fries and made fun of my reading habits. The woman who cried watching Christmas commercials and read books I’m pretty sure would make me blush.
Outside of my brothers, she was the most consistent presence in my life.
My brothers and I were close. I could tell them anything, but sometimes the things that were on my mind were about them.
And it was never a good idea to talk about one brother with another.
That shit got messy. And I couldn’t tell them I was feeling pressure from the family to be something I wasn’t.
Kensey was always there for me. My rock.
My confidante. The one that made me laugh when shit was going sideways.
She always knew what to say to help settle me.
Point me in the right direction. I counted on her, and somewhere along the way, I fell in love with her. Maybe I’d always been in love with her.
I couldn’t remember why I’d waited so long.
I stared at the ceiling. I’d been running on a kind of autopilot I hadn’t noticed because it was easy. Work was good. The store was good. The family was in good shape. I had a beautiful house. Everything was fine. I had a good life.
There was a naked woman in my shower. Why in the hell was I lying in bed? I got up and decided I also needed a rinse.
The shower cut off.
“Dammit.”
I heard her moving around in the bathroom. The muffled sound of her humming. I leaned against the headboard, pulled one knee up, and waited.
The bathroom door opened. She was wearing my robe. It was too big for her, so it pooled around her feet. Her hair was damp and loose around her shoulders. She had a small towel in one hand that she’d been using to squeeze the water out of the ends.
She looked up and found me watching her.
“I stole your robe,” she said.
“I noticed.”
“You’re staring.”
“You’re sexy as hell,” I said. “Damn straight I’m staring.”
She smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed, working the towel through her hair. I pulled her arm, dragging her closer to me.
“I was thinking about getting you dirty again,” I said.
“Were you?”
I kissed her. “Yep. So, I could get in that shower. All that water sluicing down your body. My tongue lapping it up.”
She laughed softly and kissed me. I kissed her back, my hands pulling her closer. Then she pulled back. Her hands pressed flat against my chest and she gave me a stern look.
“I need breakfast,” she said. “Before our next round I’m going to need sustenance. I require fuel. I am not a machine.”
“Fine,” I said. “I can’t have you passing out on me. Although I think you did pass out once last night. I made you see stars. That’s what you told me.”
She slapped at my chest. “Stop it!”
“Your eyes rolled back in your head.”
“Feed me!”
“I’ll feed you something.”
She rolled her eyes. “That is the lamest line ever.”
“Fine, I’ll make you breakfast.”
“You know how to cook?” she asked, following me toward the kitchen with clear skepticism in her voice.
“I can scramble eggs,” I said. “And I can put bread in a toaster.”
She shrugged. “That works for me.”
I pulled the refrigerator open and she hoisted herself up onto one of the stools. I grabbed the eggs and butter and set them on the counter. I was shirtless, which I was aware of, and she was watching me, which I was also aware of.
I cracked the first egg against the side of the bowl. I might have flexed my bicep.
She laughed. “I saw that.”
“Good.” I stirred the eggs in the bowl, doing a little pec dance.
“You’re unbelievable,” she said.
“Believe it, baby.”
I pushed the eggs around the pan and dropped two slices of bread into the toaster. I looked back at her over my shoulder.
“How do you want them?” I asked. “I can do soft or slightly less soft. Those are my two settings.”
“Soft,” she said. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” I agreed.
Five minutes later, I put two plates on the island. Poured two cups of coffee and sat on the stool beside her.
She picked up her fork and took a bite. I watched her face.
“Okay,” she said. “These are actually good.”
“You sound surprised.”
She shrugged. She took another bite and looked around the kitchen, then out through the glass toward the water. Million-dollar view.
“This place is genuinely beautiful, Drew,” she said. “Like, I knew it would be nice, but this is something else. Seeing it in the daylight is different.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it.” She turned on her stool, taking in the whole space. The ceilings, the stone fireplace, the wall of glass. “It’s really impressive.”
I watched her look at it the way I’d looked at it when I first bought it. I’d forgotten what it felt like to see it fresh. I’d gotten used to it, which felt like a crime. The view alone deserved to be appreciated on the daily.
She turned back to her eggs. “It’s a lot of space, though.” She said it not as a criticism but more like she was thinking out loud. “For just you.”
I picked up my coffee. “Yeah. But the views.”
She glanced at me sideways, probably checking to see if I’d taken it wrong.
I hadn’t. Because she wasn’t wrong.
“The view is stunning,” she said. “A quick walk to the beach.”
“About three minutes.”
“I’m surprised you don’t spend more time on the beach.”
“Some of us work all summer.”
“Ah, good point.” She smiled and took another bite. “It’s gorgeous. And the pool is amazing. I bet you don’t even know what half the bathrooms in this place look like.”
I laughed. “I make it a point to visit every room in the house at least once a month.”
She laughed again. “Oh, the horror of not being able to visit every room in your house.”
She was right. It was something I’d been thinking about for a while. The house was everything I’d wanted when I bought it. The view. The location. The design. It seemed suitable.
Five bedrooms. Seven bathrooms. I’d bought all of it with some vague future in mind. And in the grand scheme of LA mansions, it was small. A lot smaller than my parents’ house.
But Kensey had been here for a single night and the house felt different.
It felt like a home. I wanted to know what it would be like to have her in the space every night.
I wanted her smutty books sitting on the bedroom nightstand.
I wanted her clothes in the closet and her makeup cluttering the bathroom counter.
I stared at my coffee cup and told myself to be careful with that line of thinking. She was leaving. That was the part I kept letting slide to the back of my mind. It was too easy to pretend there was a version of this story that led to a happy ending.
I had to keep her impending departure front and center.
She had a job in New Jersey. An apartment.
A life she’d built out there that she was proud of and rightfully so.
She hadn’t come back to stay. She made it very clear last night she didn’t want to come back home.
Her job in New Jersey made her happy. I couldn’t ask her to give that up for me.
Whatever this was between us, whatever it was turning into, it had an expiration date I couldn’t ignore. I was already in deep enough that walking away from this at the end of summer was going to cost me something. The longer I let myself pretend otherwise, the worse the bill was going to be.
I was not going to fall apart over a woman. Even if that woman was someone as special as Kensey.
She stole the last piece of my toast without asking. I let her have it.
“Hey,” I said.
She looked up, still chewing.
“I have to go to San Francisco in a couple of days. For a meeting.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
“Come with me,” I said.
She stopped. “What?”
“The meeting itself is about three hours of my life I’ll never get back,” I said. “But after that, we’ve got the rest of the trip. Good food. Good city. I haven’t been up there just to be there in years. We can play tourist.”
“What about the market event?” she asked. “And the yacht party?”
“This meeting is about the market event,” I said. “But after? Me. You. Sourdough grilled cheese. A trolley.”
She pressed her lips together, fighting a smile. “You’ve thought about this.”
“I have.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” She wiped her mouth. “San Francisco. I’m in.”
I looked at her sitting there in my robe and imagined her waiting on the sofa when I came home after a long day. Lazy Sundays with banana pancakes. Morning walks on the beach. Making love on the patio. Skinny dipping.
I pushed all of it back.
We had now. We had San Francisco.
I was going to take it.
“I’m going to shower,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll go for a dip in that pool. I didn’t bring a suit. Mind if I go naked?”
“Wait, what?”
She laughed and shoved me away. “I was kidding but don’t think I couldn’t read your mind. Go shower. We have to go to work and I need to go home and get some clothes.”
“Do we have to be adults today?” I asked.
“I think we do,” she said. “We’ll be kids in San Francisco. I have a ton of emails to get to.”
“Boo. All work and no play sucks ass.”
She stood up, kissed me, and then slapped my ass. “Hurry up. We’ve got work to do.”
I groaned, dropped my chin to my chest, let my arms hang, and shuffled out of the room like a kid that got told he couldn’t go to the sleepover.
But in a couple of days, we’d sleep in, order room service, and pretend we lived in an endless summer.